


leaves from the vine

by allp_wips



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allp_wips/pseuds/allp_wips
Summary: Astra has a tattoo.





	leaves from the vine

Astra has a tattoo.

 

It snakes across the entirety of her back. Alex realizes it exists when she gets to see bits and glimpses of it, through a torn uniform, after the first time that Astra crosses over to their side and fights with them. 

 

This surrender makes Astra the target of the rest of the Fort Rozz inmates who hadn’t wanted to give up their cause, which means that Astra ends up being piled on by them in nearly every battle after that for months, often having to be pulled unconscious from the scene in the aftermath.

 

So, it’s in bits and pieces that Alex makes out the tattoo. It’s made of large blue-ish leaves, snaking down Astra’s back along vines of summer green, with small flowers of white in between. The leaves look unlike in shape to any Earth plant, so Alex wonders if this is something from Krypton, or just something drawn from the fanciful imagination of the artist.

 

She doesn’t realize, until much later, that there are letters drawn into the vines.

 

\---

 

Alex first realizes there are letters along the vines, the first time she treats Astra at the medbay. 

 

It’s after a bout with the Agents of Liberty, when they’d been covering each other’s back, and Astra had gotten hit by a stray kryptonite bullet. Usually, Alex would just let one of the interns look to it, but considering that they’d been partners in the melee, and she’d come out of it unscathed, she feels as if it’s her responsibility to tend to Astra’s injuries, somehow.

 

When she zips away Astra’s uniform down to the waist, to get clearer access to the wounds, she gets her first full look at the tattoo. It’s beautiful, Alex has to admit, even faded as the ink is. She can’t help but study it, even as she’s cleaning up the bleeding.

 

That’s how she comes to realize that there are faded letters running through the thickest vine, the one that reaches diagonally from Astra’s lower back to her shoulder. They’re in an older cursive Kryptonese script that Alex can’t read, but which she’s seen Kara write sometimes, in notes and post-its to her aunt. 

 

When she’s done stitching up the main wound, Alex pauses before zipping the uniform back up. She presses her fingers against the letters, and is about to ask what they mean - scientific curiosity trumps everything, even her wariness about an enemy recently turned ally, or awkwardness about touching a half-naked woman she barely knows - when she feels Astra tense up, like she’s about to get hit. The woman keeps on being tense, until Alex takes her hand away.

 

Alex decides that maybe then and there is not the best opportunity to ask the question on the tip of her tongue.

 

\---

  
  


The next time Alex encounters the tattoo is quite a few months later.

 

Their fight with the alien invasion force is long. Everyone is exhausted by the time it’s over, both Kara and Astra have lost their powers, and it takes everything Alex has just to stay awake until she’s done debriefing all her agents and sending them home.

 

She staggers down to the stalls at the end of it all, intent only on getting all the grime off her body. Exhausted to the point that her eyes are barely keeping open, Alex pulls open the first shower stall, and walks in-

 

-only to be smacked right in the fact with a view of a very naked Astra’s very muscled back, tattoos and all.

 

As far as wake-up calls go, it’s better than an espresso shot.

 

Astra turns around unhurriedly and  stares at her, eyebrows raised. She looks unmoved at being walked in on so abruptly, except for the fact that her face is flushed, although that could be from the heat of the shower.

 

“Has something come up?” she asks.

 

Alex stares, opens her mouth, shakes her head, and finally gathers the brain cells together to answer.

 

“Nope,” she gets out, before slamming the door, stalking over to the next free stall, and running her burning cheeks under a cold shower for five minutes straight.

 

It isn’t until she wakes up from 15-hours of a dead sleep later, that she realizes that there had been new letters added to the vines, even though she still can’t make any of them out.

 

\---

 

The first time Alex gets to ask Astra about the tattoo is after the first time they sleep together.

 

They’ve been dancing around each other for months. Alex has it planned in her head that one day, when things settle down a bit at the DEO, she might ask Astra out for a coffee. They might go on a few dates, she plans, and if things go well, then they might go further. Later,  _ after _ everything settles down a bit, and after Kara has time to get used to the idea too. 

 

She tells herself that for months.

 

She doesn’t plan on kissing Astra on a rooftop, unprompted and with savage vigour, after a fight that leaves both of them almost dead. She doesn’t plan on fucking her that very same night, when they come together in an explosive coupling, barely managing to make it to Alex’s bed before Astra tears her clothes off. She doesn’t plan any of that, but it happens anyway.

 

Somewhere in the tangle of mouths and limbs, though, things turn gentle. So-glad-to-be-alive fucking turns to so-glad-to-be-here-doing-this-with-you fucking, which turns at some point into them simply taking turns exploring each other’s body, with soft touches and kisses.

 

Much later in the night, when they’re curled around each other, weary and spent, Alex traces the tattoo on Astra’s back. Even though she can’t see them, as she’s facing Astra, she can see the leaves and vines and letters like a photograph in her head, and the compelling curiosity overtakes her again.

 

“What do they mean?” she finally asks. “The letters.”

 

Astra looks at her with an odd bashfulness from under her eyelashes, like she immediately knows what Alex is referring to.

 

“It’s old Kandorian script,” she says, her voice low and drowsy. “The middle word is Alura.”

 

That had been the faintest word, Alex remembers, as faint as the rest of the leaves.

 

“The one on the left is Kara’s name,” Astra continues. “I had it added on when she was born, although it was hard to find someone who could tattoo Kryptonese script on Draar, where I was deployed when Alura sent me the news.”

 

Her eyelashes flutter, as if she’s having trouble keeping herself awake. Alex doesn’t blame her, as the fight had been exhausting enough that Astra had blown her powers again. But, she has to know.

 

“And the last one?” she asks, her voice tinged with urgency. “The one that you got last year?”

 

A peaceful smile curls up Astra’s lips. “You know, brave one.”

 

“Oh.” Alex swallows. “But, that was before we-”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But, that means you-”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Oh,” Alex says and feels the need to swallow again.

 

Astra doesn’t look bashful at all, now, even though she’s basically professed to being in love with Alex way before Alex had even considered the possibility.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“It wasn’t about reciprocity,” Astra says. “It was about my feelings towards you. Nothing more, and nothing less.”

 

Alex wonders, vaguely, why she isn’t terrified by this. When men in college had said similar things to her, her first instinct had been to run, far away, into the arms of the first strong drink she could find. 

 

Now, she simply feels at peace, at hearing the same confession from Astra, maybe because she isn’t trying to live a life anymore that she wasn’t made for. What she has with Astra might be unplanned, but it feels real, in a way those fumbling encounters in college never did. 

 

“Alex?” Astra’s voice breaks into her thoughts. “You seem uneasy.”

 

“No,” Alex says, her voice thick, and realizes with some horror that she’s about to cry. “It’s just-”

 

She chokes up, and waves Astra back down she gets up in alarm.

 

“I just, I never thought this would happen to me,” she says. “I never thought I was made for love.”

 

“You’re made for many great things.” Astra’s hand curls through her hair, stroking down from her scalp to her face. “Love is one of them, and I do love you.”

 

Another choked sound escapes Alex despite her best efforts, and she figures it’s about time she said something coherent, so as not to embarrass herself completely. “I love you too, you stupid, self-sacrificing Kryptonian.”

 

Astra smiles, and her eyes close. 

 

“I think I’ve waited a whole lifetime to hear that.”

 

\---


End file.
